fosdic III and the '60 Census
Electronics lends a much needed helping hand to the census takers for this big once-in-10-years event.
IF you haven't already, you'll soon be filling in the decennial census form, 1960 version, designed to include every U. S. family. Nearly 160,000 persons will be employed by the Bureau of the Census to collect and process this data. The National Bureau of Standards has made their job easier by developing FOSDIC III (Film Optical Sensing Device for Input to Computers), an electronic workhorse that rapidly reads (detects) pen or pencilled marks in multiple choice answer areas that have been microfilmed.

Torture Test!
It's murder! Sardonic schemes check consumer products to see if they can take rugged treatment.
Groaning printed circuit of Sylvania TV set, with tubes and components in place, is made to vibrate up to four inches out of position 22 times per sec.

New FM Auto Radio
OUR recent survey "FM Radios for Your Car" (December 1959) contained several reports from leading auto radio makers which stated flatly they had no plans for marketing an FM auto radio. Motorola was one of them. In spite of their former stand—or perhaps because of our article—Motorola is now mass producing the FM-900, a mobile radio that tunes 88-108 mc.

Music From Nowhere
By James Joseph
The theremin—is it "electronics gone haywire?'1 Picking music from air isn't as easy as it looks.
MAYBE you were among the hundreds of TV skeptics who, doubting their own eyes, recently flooded a network's switchboard with angry complaints about what appeared to be a man coaxing music out of thin air.

Electronics Tells The Chemist
By Shirley Motter Linde
THERE are about 750,000 known organic chemical compounds. Less than one percent of these have any known medical or industrial use!
The other 99 percent are a huge potential of untapped applications. They represent hundreds of thousands of chemicals sitting idle on laboratory shelves when they might possibly be useful in curing cancer, fighting viruses, killing insects, giving more gas mileage, making rocket fuels for space vehicles, producing new synthetics, etc.

Cosmic Clearing House
By Lloyd Mallan
Life on other planets? How can we communicate?
These are questions for Cornell's new space center.
THERE are about ten-billion suns in our "local" universe, the Milky Way. Will man be able to communicate with countless planets that are probably revolving about them? Is our knowledge of radio adequate?